WaPo Notes CIA Traitor's Death in Cuba, Fails to Note He Was Castro Apologist

Photo of Ken Shepherd.
By Ken Shepherd (Bio | Archive)
January 10, 2008 - 12:39 ET

Yesterday fellow NewsBuster Matthew Balan and I wrote about media bias in Reuters and Associated Press reporting on the death of CIA turncoat Philip Agee. Today the Washington Post devoted a 23-paragraph obituary to Agee that was also somewhat lacking.

The Post's Joe Holley did relay to readers that former President George H.W. Bush believes Agee's role in divulging the names of covert operatives resulted in at least one death, that of CIA agent Richard Welch at the hands of Greek terrorists in Athens in December 1975.

Yet while Holley mentioned that in 1987 then-Secretary of State George Schultz denied Agee a passport due to "CIA reports that Mr. Agee was a paid adviser to Cuban intelligence, had trained Nicaraguan security officials and had tried to thwart the U.S. invasion of Grenada," Holley failed to follow the thread any further on Agee's sympathy with the Marxist regimes, particularly Fidel Castro's.

As a January 9 AP obit noted, Agee was a Castro apologist, writing as late as 2003 in the propaganda newspaper Granma defending Castro's crackdowns on pro-democracy activists:

One of Agee's last essays was published in Granma International newspaper in 2003 shortly after the Cuban government arrested 75 leading dissidents and political activists.

"To think that the dissidents were creating an independent, free civil society is absurd," he wrote, "for they were funded and controlled by a hostile foreign power and to that degree, which was total, they were not free or independent in the least."

—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters


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I expect nothing less from

January 10, 2008 - 12:54 ET by bigtimer

I expect nothing less from the likes of WaPo and other leftist loving fishwrap....

Btw...I just cried a roomful of Clinton tears when hearing of this traitors death this morning on the Washington Journal.

I would love to live in Cuba without Fidel

January 10, 2008 - 17:32 ET by Lame Cherry

Papa Hemingway always loved Cuba and I hope that Andy Garcia soon realizes his dream of seeing his homeland liberated and a free Cuba.........or one run by the Rockefellers as a money laundering haven for dope funds.......with a free society is realized as the world dope trade will never allow Cuba to be free literally again.

I love the Cuban people. For the most part the GOP under Bush has been pure Cuban in strong defense and spending on social issues. That is what Cuban Republican is all about. I might not like the policy, but I like Cubans from Andy Garcia to about every woman named Maria.

Hopefully all these old commists like Agee will croak like Fidel and brother Fidel and I can sit drinking beer at the Bay of Pigs as Andy and I fish the surf.

Oh and a request Mr. Shep, could Newsbusters instead of putting on pictures of communists like Joy Behar or no photos like your post just put up a generic babe photo as some of these stories on here are so repulsive only a good looking GOP babe can make one not wince while typing about Maddy Albright.
I know I won't get it, but was at least mentioning as most guys on here think it a great idea but would never say it.

 

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